Hellboy Reboot Adds American Honey Star Sasha Lane

1 year ago

Just one day after a report surfaced claiming the new Hellboy reboot will feature the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense (B.P.R.D.) and comic book characters such as Abe Sapien, Alice Monaghan and Ben Daimio, the Alice character has been cast. Sasha Lane, the 21-year-old actress who made her breakthrough feature film debut with last year’s American Honey, is in final negotiations to play Alice Monaghan, who in the original Mike Mignola comics was a love interest for Hellboy (David Harbour). It isn’t clear at this time how many more major characters have yet to be cast, but this diverse ensemble is coming together quite quickly.

The Hollywood Reporter broke the news on this casting earlier today, while also confirming a report from May that the Hellboy reboot starts filming in September. While it isn’t clear who will play Abe Sapien or Ben Daimio quite yet, Sasha Lane joins a cast that also includes Milla Jovovich as The Blood Queen and Ian McShane as Professor Broom, a character played by John Hurt in 2004’s Hellboy and 2008’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army. While Abe Sapien was played by Doug Jones in those movies, the Alice Monaghan and Ben Daimio characters were not featured.

This report also claims that the story follows Hellboy squaring off against a “medieval sorceress,” the aforementioned Blood Queen, who has designs on destroying the world as we know it. In the comic books, Alice Monaghan was rescued by Hellboy from the faeries who kidnapped her, and she retains some “supernatural gifts” thanks to all the time she has spent with the faeries. One of these gifts was Alice’s ability to “hear dead people” and she can also use the “Spirit Wrack” in this movie. Still, it remains unclear if she will become a love interest to Hellboy, but since we haven’t heard about the involvement of the Liz Sherman character, played by Selma Blair in the first two movies it’s possible Alice Monaghan will be Hellboy’s go-to girlfriend.

It was also recently confirmed that this project will be titled Hellboy, and not Hellboy: Rise of the Blood Queen, as previously reported. While there had been talk of merely continuing the story laid out by writer-director Guillermo del Toro and star Ron Perlman, with a new cast and crew, it was also recently confirmed that this will be a complete reboot that will start the story over from scratch. This will also be the first R-rated Hellboy movie, with the story said to be much darker and more gruesome that the first two movies before it. Still, we won’t know for sure how much more dark and gruesome it is until production begins and we can see the first footage.

Stranger Things star David Harbour takes over the title role from Ron Perlman, with Neil Marshall (The Descent, Game of Thrones) directing from a script that has been worked on by Andrew Cosby, Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola. Larry Gordon and Lloyd Levin will produce with Dark Horse Entertainment’s Mike Richardson. After making her feature film debut in A24’s critically-acclaimed American Honey, Sasha Lane has been lining up projects left and right, although this Hellboy reboot will mark her first major studio project. She most recently shot The Miseducation of Cameron Post alongside Chloe Moretz and Shotgun with Maika Monroe, with others such as Freak Shift, Shoplifters of the World and Hunting Lila in pre-production. With the cast coming together so quickly we may be hearing about more Hellboy casting additions sooner rather than later.